Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc is characterizing its SH7750 chip – the first in the SH-4 SuperH series – as the most powerful available to run Microsoft Corp’s Windows CE. The chip, announced last year (CI No 3,287), has just been verified by Hitachi and Microsoft as CE-2.1 compatible – not surprising given the success the previous generation SH-3 chip achieved for handheld CE-based devices. CE 2.1 is due out during the first half of this year (CI No 3,383). The SH7750, a two-issue superscalar RISC with 64-bit external data bus and an internal clock speed of 200MHz, is rated at 350 mips, but is economic enough in its power usage to be usable for handheld PCs, set-top boxes and car navigation systems, such as the Microsoft Corp-Clarion Corp Auto PC (CI No 3,323). It’s also being aimed at network modem, portable communication and thin client products. At San Jose’s Windows CE Developers Conference this week, Hitachi was demonstrating CE running on its D9000 development system using the chip, but one of its customers, Qubit Technology Inc of Denver, Colorado was also on hand to talk about the high bandwidth internet appliances it is building around theSH7750. Hitachi boasts it won eleven of the first wave of seventeen handheld systems using CE to come to market with its SH-3 chip.
